Here's What You Learn If You Follow Eight Young Bankers Around For Two Years

Think of it like 'Real World, Wall Street': One journalist
followed around eight young strangers in their first years of
banking. Then the journalist, New York Magazine's Kevin Roose,
put it all together in a book.

Roose spent years interviewing his subjects, crashing parties and
recruiting events, even taking an Excel modeling classes. The
work shows. His book is an honest portrait of young kids who,
like everyone else, are engaged in the arduous business of
growing up. They just happen to have a weird environment in which
to do it.

It's clear from Roose's writing that you don't watch this sort of
evolution without evolving yourself. That's why Business Insider
caught up with him to get some answers about what he found — what
is it that desensitizes kids when they get to The Street, how he
found eight (eight!) young bankers who weren't too scared to talk
to him, and more.

Here's what he learned:

Business Insider: What did you think about Wall Street
before you started this project and how has that
changed?

Kevin Roose: To be honest, I don't think my
opinions of "Wall Street," as an entity, have changed that much.
I still think banks are too big; I still think greed and
insufficient regulation are a problem; I still think the
financial crisis was a terrible, preventable thing.

What changed is how I think about bankers. I don't judge the
young ones as a group anymore. There are good ones, and bad ones,
and you kind of have to evaluate them on their individual merits,
rather than writing them all off at once.

BI: How could you tell when you found someone who would
make a good subject?

KR: I wanted to get a good cross-section of
young Wall Street, so I had to make sure that in the group I
chose, women would be represented, people of color would be
represented, and they'd be spread out across Wall Street in terms
of their firms and their job functions. Of course, the most
important consideration was whether they were willing to be
honest and real with me. If they just wanted to brag about how
many beers they crushed last night or how many models they'd
slept with, I wasn't that interested.

BI: Now that you've done this, why do you actually think
people go to Wall Street?

KR: I think some people, especially people
who come out of college with student debt, or whose parents are
working-class, do it for the money. But other people do it
because it's easy. If you go to Yale or Princeton, all your
friends are going into banking, it pays well and gives you a
prestigious launching pad and all you have to do is drop your
résumé into a box to apply — a lot of kids say, why not?

BI: What do all these kids have in common after their
experience on the Street?

KR: Gray hair.

BI: In a sentence, what does Wall Street do to your
brain?

KR: Can I do it in a GIF?

BI: Do you think these kids got paid too
much?

KR: I mean, it's a lot of money. Most of
them were making somewhere between $90,000 and $130,000 their
first year, and more after that. I heard some of them say that if
you calculate it hourly, based on how much they work, it's like
$16 an hour. That's a good job! But it isn't as amazing as most
people think.

BI: Have any of the kids you followed who left Wall
Street shed the habits that they picked up there, or are they
forever changed?

KR: I think a lot of the day-to-day habits
are sheddable, especially if you get out within two years. But
even the bankers who left finance told me that working on Wall
Street had changed the way they thought about the world. It's a
very strong belief system. I don't know if you can ever really
leave it behind.

BI: Did you ever for any moment during your research wish
you had become a banker? Even a little bit? Why? Why
not?

KR: Nope! I'd be a terrible banker. I took
an Excel boot camp, to learn how to make Excel models and stuff,
and I think I came in last in the class on every exercise. And
seeing how miserable my sources were at their jobs wasn't exactly
a glowing testimonial. Also, I'm pretty sure I'm blackballed now,
even if I did have a change of heart.

BI: The bottom line is that a lot of the kids you wrote
about weren't happy. How should schools or recruiting programs
change so that kids who won't be happy on Wall Street don't end
up there?

KR: I think it's happening naturally as the
industry's prestige wears off. It used to be that the kid at Yale
who majored in archaeology would go into banking, just because
that was the popular and cool thing to do. Now, that kid has more
options, like going to Teach For America or Google. More of the
students who are interested in Wall Street now are the ones who
actually want to be bankers. There are fewer unhappy dilettantes
who just do it because it's the next step on the path.

BI: Did you ever get mad or frustrated at your subjects?
And if so, why?

KR: Once, I remember prodding a guy who was
feeling sorry for himself. This guy was making something like
$200,000 a year as a 24-year-old in private equity and he still
wasn't happy, and he was pouring out his woes to me, and I kind
of stopped him short. Like, do you know how lucky you are
compared to the rest of the world? Most of the time, though, the
bankers I followed had a good perspective on the relative size of
their problems.

BI: What was the most obnoxious thing you saw in your
research?

KR: I went to a Fashion Meets Finance
dating mixer, which is where they put a bunch of Wall Street
dudes in a room with a bunch of women who work in fashion. That
was an atrocious party, just horrible. I actually heard a guy use
the phrase "PJ," as in "private jet."

BI: What is it about Wall Street that desensitizes
people?

KR: I think it's the pace. When you're 22
and working at a bank, you don't have much time to be sensitive
and introspective. It's all about getting things done, avoiding
mistakes, and impressing the boss.

BI: Did any banks seem to have a better culture than
others or were they all the same?

KR: You know, I actually didn't see much of
a difference between banks. I certainly think there are
tendencies within the divisions of a firm — the stereotypical oil
trader is a little more jock-like and macho than the investment
banker at the same firm. But all the bankers I followed tended to
have a fairly common set of experiences, no matter where they
worked.

BI: Do you know any adults who made it through Wall
Street well adjusted? How do you think they did it?

KR: I think it has to do with avoiding
social isolation. If everyone you interact with all day is a
millionaire or billionaire and works in finance, it warps your
perspective. The people I know who work in finance and are the
best-adjusted are the people who have diverse groups of friends —
you know, they play pick-up basketball with cops, or they
volunteer at a school one day a week. Their lives are bigger than
just banking.